3 White Collar Crime General sense: Specific SenseA variety of offences committed by powerful people or organizationsOffences are enabled by legitimate activitiesSpecific SenseOffences carried out by individual people in the course of their employment, often against employers

4 Edwin Sutherland (1941) White Collar Crime“crime committed by persons of high social status and respectability”a critiques of criminology’s focus on low-status criminality:‘hidden’ / non-crime status of middle class criminalitycrime defined in terms of harm on victims / societyQuestions raised about criminal status and social class

6 Corporate CrimeIllegal actions, or omissions, resulting from deliberate decision making, or culpable negligence on the part of a companyOrganizational Goals central to understanding corporate crimeIndifference to outcome of action often contributes

7 Jeffrey Reiman “The Rich Get Richer: The Poor get Prison”The Social Construction of CrimeThe construction of ‘crime’ focuses attention onto the social harm perpetrated by the poor, and away from those (more damaging) harms perpetrated by corporations“Typical” criminal: young, urban, poor and ethnic minorityA distortion of harms: “a carnival mirror”

8 How is this social construction achieved?Legislative definitions of crimePolice and prosecutor prioritiesJudges and jury decisionsSentencingMedia reporting of ‘crimes’ and ‘accidents’Each of these stages are inter-related

18 Problems with “Hidden” Corporate CrimeConstruction of Official StatisticsMedia Constructions of the Criminal: ‘Respectable’ v ‘Criminal’CJS focus on “conventional” crimeCorporate crime largely outside control of Criminal JusticeMost cases emerge from campaigning / whistle-blowingCrime is seen as individualistic, inter-personal, and finite: much corporate crime does not fit the model

19 Organized CrimeThe production, supply and financing of illegal markets in good and servicesOrganizations established with criminal intent, though the divide from corporate crime is not always clearMuch organized crime is “governmental”: threatening the State’s monopoly of coercion, protection and extraction

21 Themes in the study of organized crimeGlobalizationLocalised ‘firms’ replaced by globalized enterprisesRelationship to legitimate businessesLegitimate business as a “front”Provision of services to businessesLegitimate businesses providing services to organized crime (consciously or unconsciously)Opportunities provided by criminalization

22 Problems for CriminologyConceptualMost of the ‘crimes of the powerful’ challenge mainstream assumptions of what crime is (e.g. victim/offender)EmpiricalEvidence of these crimes are much harder to obtainExplanatoryMainstream theories need adapting, though many can retain relevanceDirect and Indirect CausesTheoreticalIs ‘crime’ the model? Harm?